Motivation

I created jzbuild a long time ago to support my workflow when I made zwibbler.com, which is about 8000 lines of javascript. I like to take the entire project, including all javascript files, and crunch them down to a single .js file that contains my web application. Though I do not use the Google closure library, the Closure compiler is great for doing this and catching errors.

I recently discovered Coffeescript, and it is a real time saver. Writing a file in Coffeescript takes only 2/3 of the lines of code. I can physically write code faster, and I can see 50% more of my code on the screen at a time. So naturally I wanted to update jzbuild to take coffeescript as well as .js files as input.

Jzbuild is nothing but a glorified installer for other programs. It is possible due to the work of many others, with special mentions for:

David Yeung, for creating jcoffeescript. This wrapper allows you to run coffeescript without installing anything except java. I forked it and added an option to allow external coffeescript code to be used.

Michael Bolin, whose fork of Coffeescript adds type annotations to coffeescript that are required by the closure compiler. I hope that he continues his excellent work. I forked his fork and removed dependencies on the Google javascript libraries.

If your project is a combination of javascript and coffeescript, and you want static type checking, I hope that jzbuild is useful. Report and fix issues: jzbuild on github.

If one apple costs $1, how much would five apples cost? How about 500? If everyday life, when you buy more of something, you get more bananas for your buck. But software companies are bucking the trend.

Much ink has been spilled about the use of cell phones on airplanes. Here's the truth, which will be disappointing to conspiracy theorists: Cell phone signals most definately have an effect on other electronic equipment. Read on for more.

Back in 2007, I created a rhyming engine based on the public domain Moby pronouncing dictionary. It simply reads the dictionary and looks for rhyming words by comparing the suffix of the words' pronunciations. Since that time, I have made some improvements.

I have never been a gamer. The most I've played was Super Mario Bros (the original). I then took a break for a decade or two and spent a few weeks with Simcity 4. All that changed when I got Google Cardboard.